Joss Whedon Quotes

This report is maybe 12-years-old. Parliament buried it, and it stayed buried till River dug it up. This is what they feared she knew. And they were right to fear because there's a whole universe of folk who are gonna know it, too. They're gonna see it. Somebody has to speak for these people. You all got on this boat for different reasons, but you all come to the same place. So now I'm asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything I know this, they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, 10, they'll swing back to the belief that they can make people ... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave. ~ Joss Whedon

I am not a fan of referencing your own work when it's in a different universe than what you're doing. That, to me, is a wink at the audience, and winking isn't actually cool when you're not, like, 10. ~ Joss Whedon

The way a musical can make us feel is unlike anything else, in song and particularly in dance. I think people fly through plate-glass windows when they get shot because movies don't have dance scenes any more. This is what we do instead. ~ Joss Whedon

If you're going to make a science fiction movie, then have a hover craft chase, for God's sake. ~ Joss Whedon

In production, in the first couple of weeks of production, that it was more like making an internet musical. ~ Joss Whedon

Good fantasy fiction: ... explores real human conditions through fantastic metaphors which universalize the characters' individual experiences to speak personally to us all. ~ Laura Resnick

In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer. ~ Joss Whedon

I always enjoy conversation more if there is some substance to it - which is a just incredibly hilarious thing for me to say because for many, many years I was the guy whose only contribution to any conversation was, 'There was a funny 'Simpson's' joke about that.' ~ Joss Whedon

So, why do you write these strong female characters?
Because you're still asking me that question.
[Equality Now speech, May 15, 2006] ~ Joss Whedon

Peace comes from the acceptance of the part of you that can never be at peace. ~ Joss Whedon

Well, I guess I kinda worked it out. If there's no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters ... , then all that matters is what we do. 'Cause that's all there is. What we do. Now. Today. ~ Joss Whedon

I like horror; I like comedy; I like drama; I like action; I like female heroes. ~ Joss Whedon

Everything I do in its essence is about helplessness. That's the story I want to tell all the time. It's the story I wanted to live - somebody who appears to be, or is, weak becoming stronger. ~ Joss Whedon

There are some things I can just smell. It's like a sixth sense." "Well, actually, that would be one of the five. ~ Joss Whedon

You think we're dancing?" "That's all we've ever done. ~ Joss Whedon

Everything I write tends to turn into a superhero team, even if I didn't mean for it to. I always start off wanting to be solitary, because a) it's simpler, and b) that isolation is something that I relate to as a storyteller. And then no matter what, I always end up with a team. ~ Joss Whedon

What 'Scream' was great at was presenting ironic detachment and then making you actually care about the people that were having it, and juxtaposing it with their situation, all in the service of making a great horror movie. It was fresh. ~ Joss Whedon

The more power that we have, the less human we are. ~ Joss Whedon

What I do like is hiking. And that's what filmmaking is. It's a hike. It's challenging and exhausting, and you don't know what the terrain is going to be or necessarily even which direction you're going in ... but it sure is beautiful. ~ Joss Whedon

Okay, uh, I'm lost. I'm angry. And I'm armed. ~ Joss Whedon

I write to be the characters that I am not. ~ Joss Whedon

If somebody comes up to me, it's because they're moved by something I'm moved by. I've never taken a job I didn't love ... So when somebody's coming up to me, or they're writing, they're in the same space I am in. ~ Joss Whedon

Angelus: Now that's everything, huh? No weapons ... No friends ... No hope. Take all that away ... and what's left? Buffy: Me. ~ Joss Whedon

This is a sad, sad reflection on our times, when people must feed off
the carcasses of beloved stories from their youths-just because they
can't think of an original idea of their own, like I did with my
Avengers idea that I made up myself ~ Joss Whedon

If I wrote what I really think, I would be so sad all the time. We create to fill a gap - not just to avoid the idea of dying, it's to fill some particular gap in ourselves. ~ Joss Whedon

I don't think I'm like Shakespeare. ~ Joss Whedon

Everything is a drug. Family, art, causes, new shoes ... We're all just tweaking our chem to avoid the void. ~ Joss Whedon

Vampire Willow: "Bored now. ~ Joss Whedon

Remember to always be yourself. ~ Joss Whedon

Equality is not a concept. It's not something we should be striving for. It's a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who's confronted with it. We need equality. Kinda now. ~ Joss Whedon

Identity is something that you are constantly earning. ~ Joss Whedon

Sarah Michelle Gellar's made some really good choices. She's had some bad breaks. She goes with the independent, interesting young filmmakers and then they get slammed, like 'Southland Tales.' I'm proud of what she's trying to do. It's hard. ~ Joss Whedon

"'Come on, guys, I'm the leader of a whole movie ... !' I tell when I want people to fear and respect me. Not wildly effective." ~ Joss Whedon

My first Comic-Con was when I first met Joss Whedon: He introduced me to that world and I'd never been to a convention before that. He and a bunch of the 'Buffy' and 'Angel' writers were all going down in a big van and he invited me along. ~ Nathan Fillion

The mythology warped and twisted back along itself until Buffy Summers, the girl who once railed against the unfairness of being Chosen, looked at a squadron of girls who were just like she'd been and took away their right to Choose. ~ Seanan McGuire

I set out in television with one simple goal: to purchase a Russian bride. Didn't work out. Immigration stuff - it's complicated. ~ Joss Whedon

I was not popular in school, and I was definitely not a ladies' man. And I had a very painful adolescence, because it was all very strange to me. It wasn't like I got beat up, but the humiliation and isolation, and the existential 'God, I exist, and nobody cares' of being a teenager were extremely pronounced for me. ~ Joss Whedon

I'm very much more interested in the created family than I am in actual families. ~ Joss Whedon

I never give up on anything, because you come back around, and suddenly the thing you thought you'd never do is relevant. ~ Joss Whedon

I love TV in a way that I don't love any other medium. ~ Joss Whedon

Are you all right?"
"Oh my god! I phased!"
"Are you all right?"
"Are you?"
"It was strange."
"I can't believe I phased just then! That's never ... it was totally your fault."
"I like to think so, yes."
"Tee hee. ~ Joss Whedon

Sorry, kid. Whedon got it wrong. Stakes don't kill vampires, they just give us heartburn. ~ Brian K. Vaughan

People used to laugh that academics would study Disney movies. There's nothing more important for academics to study, because they shape the minds of our children possibly more than any single thing. ~ Joss Whedon

You know, the thing that I do to waste time is think of things I want to make. That's how my mind is employed. ~ Joss Whedon

Humor keeps us alive. Humor and food. Don't forget food. You can go a week without laughing. ~ Joss Whedon

A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend ~ Joss Whedon

We need narrative; it feeds us in a particular way, and deconstructing it completely before you've actually experienced it, I think it leaves us unfed. ~ Joss Whedon

I don't write just to be clever. But sometimes I do. And if you don't have an understanding of the language, then the way in which it's bent doesn't actually register. It's the old you-gotta-paint-like-them-before-you-can-paint-like-you thing. ~ Joss Whedon

I don't understand why or how anyone ever pulled off the whole idea of 'women are inferior.' ~ Joss Whedon

My favorite part of Comic-Con? The groupies. ~ Joss Whedon

It was Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the television series, 1997-2003, not the lackluster movie that preceded it) that blazed the trail for Twilight and the slew of other paranormal romance novels that followed, while also shaping the broader urban fantasy field from the late 1990s onward.

Many of you reading this book will be too young to remember when Buffy debuted, so you'll have to trust us when we say that nothing quite like it had existed before. It was thrillingly new to see a young, gutsy, kick-ass female hero, for starters, and one who was no Amazonian Wonder Woman but recognizably ordinary, fussing about her nails, her shoes, and whether she'd make it to her high school prom. Buffy's story contained a heady mix of many genres (fantasy, horror, science-fiction, romance, detective fiction, high school drama), all of it leavened with tongue-in-cheek humor yet underpinned by the serious care with which the Buffy universe had been crafted. Back then, Whedon's dizzying genre hopping was a radical departure from the norm-whereas today, post-Buffy, no one blinks an eye as writers of urban fantasy leap across genre boundaries with abandon, penning tender romances featuring werewolves and demons, hard-boiled detective novels with fairies, and vampires-in-modern-life sagas that can crop up darn near anywhere: on the horror shelves, the SF shelves, the mystery shelves, the romance shelves. ~ Ellen Datlow

Always be yourself... unless you suck. ~ Joss Whedon

But if you, as an independent filmmaker or a 'serious' filmmaker, think you put more love into your characters than the Russo Brothers do Captain America, or Joss Whedon does the Hulk, or I do a talking raccoon, you are simply mistaken. ~ James Gunn

A great scientist is more open to a new idea than almost anybody. ~ Joss Whedon

Something like 'Much Ado' happens, and even 'Avengers' happens because of the years of building connections and doing the work and proving yourself. ~ Joss Whedon

I like Victorian children's novels extremely a lot. If I would say I collect anything, that's what I'll hunt for now and again at old book stores. ~ Joss Whedon

I've been in this business for a long while, but it's not like I've been waiting tables. Since I started writing, I've only worked on things that I love. I've had a lot of heartbreak, but you don't become an artist and not expect that. ~ Joss Whedon

An audience who watches my shows knows who I am, knows that right when they think I'm going to make a joke, I'm going to blow something up, or during the worst peril, I'm going to have someone give someone a kiss - it's just going to happen. ~ Joss Whedon

Okay. So...serious wedgie... ~ Joss Whedon

I always want to make sure I'm telling a story about people that I care about. ~ Joss Whedon

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN' SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn. ~ Joss Whedon

Time is what turns kittens into cats. ~ Joss Whedon

The comic world has its own limitations, as everything does. I adore it, I respect it, but it's not going to take over all of me. ~ Joss Whedon

Because to me, there is no logic of any kind behind misogyny. Therefore, it's funny, because it's so completely random to me. It's senseless. ~ Joss Whedon

I've often said there's no such thing as a track record in TV. I seen people who created things much more successful than mine treated like dirt. ~ Joss Whedon

Mal: [closing the doors] Good day! ~ Joss Whedon

I think we can fairly conclude that writer-director Joss Whedon didn't make 'The Avengers' for me. ~ Steve Erickson

That wouldn't be a first, now would it?"
"Jean."
"Jean Grey is dead, Agent."
"Yeah, that'll last. ~ Joss Whedon

The thing with the comics is that you have license to go down every alley your brain can think of. ~ Joss Whedon

I'm more intrigued by things that I haven't really conceived of yet. I have the luxury of being able to think: "I've never done a ballet or an animated film myself." There are certain things that I feel I'd love to. I just want to keep trying new things and seeing if I'm any good at them, and if I'm not, then at least learning that. I definitely think I'm more interested in what medium I can explore right now than any specific story. ~ Joss Whedon

Scramblers deactivated, then?
Well here's some good news.
You feel no pain.
You will go straight to a hospital. Remember nothing of this place.
And every time you hear the words "parsley", "intractable" or "longitude", you will vomit uncontrollably for forty-eight hours. ~ Joss Whedon

It may not feel too classy, begging just to eat
But you know who does that?
Lassie, and she always gets a treat

So you wonder what your part is
Because you're homeless and depressed But home is where the heart is
So your real home's in your chest

Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone's got villains they must face
They're not as cool as mine
But folks you know it's fine to know your place

Everyone's a hero in their own way
In their own not-that-heroic way
So I thank my girlfriend Penny
Yeah, we totally had sex
She showed me there's so many different muscles I can flex

There's the deltoids of compassion,
There's the abs of being kind
It's not enough to bash in heads
You've got to bash in minds

Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone's got something they can do Get up go out and fly
Especially that guy, he smells like poo

Everyone's a hero in their own way
You and you and mostly me and you
I'm poverty's new sheriff
And I'm bashing in the slums
A hero doesn't care if you're a bunch of scary alcoholic bums

Everybody!

Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone can blaze a hero's trail
Don't worry if it's hard
If you're not a friggin 'tard you will prevail

Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone's a hero in their... ~ Joss Whedon

Dr. Banner, your work is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous, green rage monster. ~ Joss Whedon

The secret to multitasking is that it isn't actually multitasking. It's just extreme focus and organization. ~ Joss Whedon

As TV and film writer/director Joss Whedon said, "The enemy of Humanism is not faith - the enemy of Humanism is hate, it is fear, it is ignorance, it is the darker part of man that is in every Humanist, and every person in the world ... But faith is something we have to embrace. Faith in God means believing absolutely in something, with no proof whatsoever. Faith in humanity means believing absolutely in something with a huge amount of proof to the contrary. We are the true believers."4 ~ Greg M. Epstein

Buffy the Vampire Slayer showed the whole world, and an entire sprawling industry, that writing monsters and demons and end-of-the-world is not hack-work, it can challenge the best. Joss Whedon raised the bar for every writer - not just genre/niche writers, but every single one of us. ~ Russell T. Davies

Casting is storytelling. ~ Joss Whedon

There are two things that interest me - and they're both power, ultimately. One is not having it and one is abusing it. ~ Joss Whedon

I didn't study writing. I didn't write anything substantial until I got to California. ~ Joss Whedon

Limitations are something that I latch onto - like working in genre, or if you're writing TV, there are act breaks, there's a length of time it's supposed to be. The restrictions of budget and sets can be really useful. When you can have everything, it's very hard to make things feel real and lived in. ~ Joss Whedon

I usually write things in my head before I ever write them down. When I write it out, usually I've already figured out what it is I'm trying to do. ~ Joss Whedon

I never write anything without humor, just because I like humor, but at the same time, it is a way for anything fantastical to become relatable. ~ Joss Whedon

Sketchy: I'm no stranger to stoner logic. ~ Joss Whedon

River Tam (Summer Glau): No power in the 'verse can stop me. ~ Joss Whedon

Live with a man 40 years. Share his house, his meals. Speak on every subject. Then tie him up, and hold him over the volcano's edge. And on that day, you will finally meet the man. ~ Joss Whedon

I'm not big on regret. It's not on my schedule. ~ Joss Whedon

I just love language. I mean, I love it. I love stage directions. Any opportunity to write. I hadn't written in so long, I get very crazy and miserable. I - it's like not seeing my kids: I can't do it for very long. ~ Joss Whedon

I didn't watch a lot of American television growing up. I just liked to read a lot and watch movies - movies, movies, and more movies. My family used to make fun of me because I'd like every movie I saw. ~ Joss Whedon

I am a fan of sequels even though they are inevitably awful. ~ Joss Whedon

The times are chaotic. For me, I would hope that people look at [Angel] and gain strength by it. With everything that I do, I hope that they see people struggling to live decent, moral lives in a completely chaotic world. They see how hard it is, how often they fail, and how they get up and keep trying. That, to me, is the most important message I'm ever going to tell. ~ Joss Whedon

All of the most important lessons about writing I learned from my father. He never set out to teach me anything, it would just be something he said casually in conversation. ~ Joss Whedon

The two things that matter the most to me: emotional resonance and rocket launchers. Party of Five, a brilliant show, and often made me cry uncontrollably, suffered ultimately from a lack of rocket launchers. ~ Joss Whedon

I like to think that I'm a populist entertainer, but I'm a little bit idiosyncratic, and sometimes the networks wouldn't really roll with that. ~ Joss Whedon

When I was backstage at Comic-Con, about to go out and do the panel for Thor, and Joss Whedon ran up and introduced himself, I already almost passed out, right then. And then, he said, "I've been meaning to call you. You have a big part in The Avengers. Can we introduce you as part of the cast?" It was pretty Make-A-Wish Foundation. I was pretty sure I was dying and nobody had told me yet. ~ Clark Gregg

The greatest expression of rebellion is joy. ~ Joss Whedon

I also felt that Ron and Hermione would have gotten divorced. I'm sorry, I just do. The end of Harry Potter did feel ultimately to me ... just the fact everybody had married everybody. The books were so real and so grounded in what things are really like when you're that age, she nailed that so beautifully. And then there was this slightly fantastical ending. I know that was there for her to say, 'Really, I mean it, no more books,' but you do sort of go, people who were in a war are different from people who haven't been, and how does it affect them? But am I going to second-guess my favorite writer? I think not. ~ Joss Whedon

That's the great thing about 'The West Wing:' you really felt like you were in the thick of it. ~ Joss Whedon

I am the immaculate embodiment of worlds. ~ Joss Whedon

Someone else's loss is my chocolatey goodness ~ Joss Whedon

In TV, there's so much compromise, it does start to grate a bit. But if you're a writer or an actor, it really is the place to be. ~ Joss Whedon